Thursday, September 24, 2009

The Goldstone Commission Report: Trouble For Israel, The US--And The UN

If indeed the Goldberg Commission Report poses a problem not only for Israel in the arena of International Humanitarian Law, but for the US as well--how about the UN?

By accepting his Gaza appointment, Judge Goldstone condoned (implicitly at best, explicitly at worst) the UN's double standards, hypocrisy, and moral bankruptcy. He has a record of doing so. When he served as chief prosecutor of the UN International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, he was appointed by and worked for the very people who should have been prosecuted in the first place.

The UN bears direct responsibility for the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 and for the mass murder of 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica (former Yugoslavia) in 1995. As General Dallaire, the Canadian commander of UN forces inRwanda, testified before the UN Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a well-equipped peacekeeping force could have stopped the genocide, and the UN Security Council could have easily created such a force in April 1994. As for Srebrenica, the UN command reneged on its commitments to the Bosnian Muslims when it vetoed NATO air strikes. According to a 1999 UN report on Srebrenica, UN officials ignored the plea of the Muslims not to be abandoned to Serb forces.
Now would be as good a time as any for the UN to demonstrate that it stands for what it says.

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2 comments:

sarrdarsali said...

The superpowers' hypocrisy and double standard is the root cause of violence, extremism and terrorism. No people, however weak and helpless, can go on enduring unspeakable miseries and slaughter for an indefinite period of time. They call Muslims extremist/terrorist but they allowed 200,000 Muslims to be massacred in Bosnia. They allowed them to be tortured,evicted and killed in Palestine and Kashmir.They are humans!! Boast of humanity, democracy bla bla bla.

Daled Amos said...

There is plenty of hypocrisy and double standards to go around.

The history of Muslims standing by while their brothers kill each other is nothing to be proud of.

But in this case, at least the facts should be verified and the full history and context made clear.